Budgeting for bankruptcy

From this year’s $1.6 trillion deficit to Medicare’s $38 trillion projected shortfall, our fiscal outlook is clear: America is on a path to bankruptcy. This is no longer news and no longer debatable. What remains in question is, what are we going to do about it?

Washington has long been aware that, unless reformed, our largest entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — will go bankrupt and, in the process, deal a crushing blow to our budget and economy.

Story Continued Below

Both Republicans and Democrats share the blame for allowing this looming crisis to worsen, and the recession and the past year’s explosion of federal spending have greatly accelerated our nation’s day of fiscal reckoning.

We no longer have the luxury of time for simply rehashing the problem; delay means the problem will become worse and more difficult to fix. We need to act.

Key in the federal government’s arsenal for correcting this dire trajectory is the annual budget. Regrettably, the president’s proposal to Congress not only failed to meet this challenge, but it also failed to even try.

The most candid expression of this sidestep can be found on Page 146 of his budget: On top of the page is a summary table of the president’s actual budget numbers, which show a simple continuation of the unsustainable path of ever-higher spending, taxes, deficits and debt. Immediately below this table is a large box acknowledging that the budget numbers are unsustainable and calling for a commission to fix the situation. The executive order creating this panel says: “The fiscal commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long term.”

In short, the president’s budget simply delegates to an ad hoc commission the task of producing a credible, sustainable budget — one of the most basic but critical tasks that the president and those of us in Congress are elected to do. This handoff of responsibility reflects a disappointing lack of leadership by the president. And I fear his Democratic colleagues who control Congress will follow suit.

The failure to address our deteriorating fiscal outlook in this year’s budget is disappointing enough. But it gets worse: The majority is apparently planning to use reconciliation instructions from last year’s budget resolution to jam through a new, trillion-dollar health care entitlement.